Tag Archives: Kill at Will

(Note: The following data is compiled from a list of sources included at the end of summary. Please click links for more detailed information. Does not include deaths from war or other government/state perpetrators to include “crimes” committed in war zones. Both Staff Sgt. Robert Bales and Major Nidal Hasan are cited in the overview. Doubtless, Hasan is included in current domestic crime statistics, Bales crimes are probably not included in domestic homicide stats. I also encourage readers to check data presented against other sources.)

According to a 2007 Small Arms Survey by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies, about 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States and the nation has about “90 guns for every 100 citizens.” The US is it the most heavily armed nation in the world with its citizens “owning 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms.”

The 2007 report estimated there were 650 million civilian firearms worldwide, and 225 million held by law enforcement and military forces.

Although the AR-15 assault-type weapon – the civilian adaptation of the standard military issueM-16 – is the most popular “sportsman’s weapon” in the US, some estimates are that during the last 60 years well over 100 million KalashnikovAK–47-style assault rifles – famously referred to as “the people’s gun”– have been put into circulation around the world.

The FBI also estimates that there are 250-270 million registered privately owned firearms in the US – 100 million handguns, 150-170 million shotguns and rifles. Others estimate 350,000,000, as there’s no way to know the number of unregistered, illegal foreign-made weapons in the country. Add those owned by the military, law enforcement agencies and museums and that’s 1 weapon for every man, woman and child.

There are 129,817 federally licensed firearms dealers, 51,438 of which are retail gun stores. That compares with 10,787 Starbucks stores, and 143,839 gas stations across the country. And that doesn’t count gun shows. About 40 percent of guns are sold in unlicensed private sales.

A 2005 nationwide Gallup poll of 1,012 adults found the following levels of firearm ownership:

Category

Percentage Owning

a Firearm

Households

42%

Individuals

30%

Male

47%

Female

13%

White

33%

Nonwhite

18%

Republican

41%

Independent

27%

Democrat

23%

In the same poll, gun owners stated they own firearms for the following reasons:

Protection Against Crime

67%

Target Shooting

66%

Hunting

41%

The most current polls report that among those who own handguns, 75 percent reported in a national survey that self-protection is the primary reason for owning a firearm. A 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology(link is to pdf for 2009 study) reported that US civilians used guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year. (Is a Gun an Effective Means of Self-Defense?)

Other cite or argue:

The 2nd Amendment & constitutionally protected rights – “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The government – to include the police and the military, shouldn’t have more guns than the people least we’d have a police-state,

The police can’t be around to protect one all the time.

Prevention from foreign invasion

Laurence Tribe on the 2nd Amendment“Tribe, well-known as a liberal scholar, concludes that the right to bear arms was conceived as an important political right that should not be dismissed as “wholly irrelevant.” Rather, Tribe thinks the Second Amendment assures that “the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification.” Tribe posits that it includes an individual right, “admittedly of uncertain scope,” to “possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes.””

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan It was a bad week for dictators, and a good one for international justice. Two brutal, U.S.-backed dictators who ruled decades ago were convicted for crimes they committed while in power. Hissene Habre took control of the northern African nation of Chad in 1982, and unleashed a reign of terror against his own people, killi […]

We continue our conversation with Dave Zirin, author of the book "Brazil's Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy," and Jules Boykoff, author of "Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics." In early August, more than 10,000 athletes across the world will convene in Rio de Janeiro's […]

Extended interview with Setsuko Thurlow, who survived the Hiroshima atomic bombing, about the bombing of 1945 and her push to eliminate nuclear weapons. On August 6, 1945, Thurlow was at school in Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on a civilian population. She has been an anti-nuclear activist for decades. Watch Part 1

Holocaust survivor and peace activist Hedy Epstein has died at the age of 91. Epstein was born in Germany and left in 1939 on a Kindertransport to England. Her parents died in Auschwitz. She later returned to Germany to work as a research analyst for the prosecution during the Nuremberg trials. She was involved in civil rights and antiwar movements throughou […]

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan Thursday, Jan. 28, was a cold morning in Durham, North Carolina. Wildin David Guillen Acosta went outside to head to school, but never made it. He was thrown to the ground and arrested by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ). He has been in detention ever since. Wildin, now 19 years old, fled his home […]

This week we speak to Katie Barnes of ESPNW about the right wing movement against trans athletes particularly trans women, recent comments by tennis legend Martina Navratilova, and we get their thoughts about the future of the struggle as well. We also have ‘Choice Words’ about Russell Westbrook’s confrontation with a so-called fan in Utah. Also we’ve got ‘ […]

This week we speak to Melissa Gira Grant, author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work about Robert Kraft’s arrest and the agendas that lurk behind charges of “human sex trafficking.” We also have ‘Choice Words’ about mental health in the NBA and we got ‘Just Stand Up’ awards for the U.S. women’s soccer team union and Kareem Abdul Jabbar as well as a […]

This week we speak to Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Dolittle and activist Eireann Dolan about their push to keep the caps union made after a relocation was announced from Derby, NY to non-union Florida. We also talk about the MLB players association and the shift in perception with respect to labor. We also got ‘Choice Words’ about Colin Kaepernick’s set […]

This week we talk to AM670’s Julie DiCaro about Joe Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field was found to have sent racist and Islamophobic emails to his family. What will be the fallout if any? We also speak to author Bijan Bayne about the legacy of Frank Robinson and the sports anniversaries ahead in 2019\. Damn we feel old. We also g […]

House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. The House Majority Leader has said that his expenses on a 2000 trip were paid by a nonprofit organization, and that the financial arrangements for it were proper.

Five months after President Bush launched his drive to overhaul Social Security, the difficult, if not impossible, task of drafting legislation begins Tuesday when the Senate Finance Committee holds the first hearing on options to secure Social Security's future.

Years ago, the federal government spent $117 million on an experimental "clean coal" power plant in Alaska designed to generate electricity with a minimum of air pollution -- but the project never got up and running.